PDI-P biggest ad spender during election campaign
PDI-P biggest ad spender during election campaign
Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The results to date of the count in the legislative elections
appear to more or less reflect the amount of work put in by the
political parties during the campaign, and how much they forked
out on advertising.
The absence of a sufficiently long campaign to allow so many
unfamiliar parties and their candidates to properly introduce
themselves to the public posed a major challenge for the
advertising agencies hired by those parties that could afford
them.
Data collected by the Institute for Studies on the Free Flow
of Information (ISAI) showed that in the first two weeks of the
campaign, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) was
the most active advertiser on radio and TV.
The PDI-P topped the list of political advertisers on the
country's 11 television stations with 1,268 spots, outnumbering
the National Mandate Party (PAN) with 302 spots and the Concern
for the Nation Functional Party (PKPB) with 252 spots, said ISAI
researcher Agus Sudibyo.
The statistics show that the PDI-P slogan of "choose the white
muzzle" (coblos moncong putih) was arguably the most popular ad,
using the party's well-known symbol of a red bull with a white
muzzle. Triawan Moenaf, chairman of Euro RSCG Partnership Adwork
who produced the PDI-P ads, said that the frequency of the ads
certainly helped, but it would not have reached the target if the
messages had not been crafted "to suit the audience's appetites."
On TV, Agus said that TVRI, Metro TV and SCTV were the three
stations with the most party ads during that period, with 704,
476 and 434 spots respectively. These were followed by Indosiar
(340 spots), TV7 (340), ANteve (332), RCTI (329), TPI (306),
Lativi (263), Global TV (253) and TransTV (249).
Yet while the campaign period may have produced additional
revenue for the TV stations, the difference between this and what
they would have earned during normal periods was not that huge.
"As everything is tightly regulated, the opportunities for
additional revenue are pretty much limited," explained Triawan,
also a member of Indonesia's Advertising Association.
The association's calculations show that even if a party ran
as many ads as the regulations allowed in the broadcast and print
media, the costs would have amounted to only some Rp 30 billion.
"And with only less than half of the parties booking ads, the
combined revenues of the 11 TV stations, dozens of radio stations
and newspapers would not even reach Rp 1 trillion," he said.
Whatever the case, the count currently underway will let the
political parties know whether their media efforts and
expenditure paid off, one way or the other.